Anyone who thinks that when push comes to shove U.S. elites will choose to allow Bernie Sanders-style Euro-socialism to prevail over Trumpism must be operating either under the illusion that today's American elite are less craven and venal than the German elites of 1932-1933 or that American democracy is less compromised than Germany's was. This book, as well as every day’s headlines in this low, dishonest decade, demonstrate otherwise.Recommended by Jason C.

Basically the Soviet Harry Potter, both in terms of its huge popularity and its story of a witchcraft institute. As a Russian novel written for adults, it is much more darkly humorous than the wizard school we are used to. Kudos to the University of Chicago for publishing a new translation of this Russian classic and for retaining the original witty illustrations!Recommended by Jason C.

Sometimes the sexual predator in your midst isn't the obviously entitled alpha male but the “sensitive” beta who acts like he's on your side because he actually believes it himself. The only problem is when you fail to recognize as much, you must be blamed and punished. Nails the toxic masculinity of 2017.Recommended by Jason C.

Cities of Salt might just be the most important Arabic-language novel published in the entire 20th century, as it brilliantly dramatizes what happens when oil is discovered in an unnamed Persian Gulf kingdom in the 1930s. Unsurprisingly banned in Saudi Arabia, this first volume of a quintet exploring the collision between Western industrialism and traditional ways of life — and the human and societal costs of this collision — looms... (read more)Recommended by Jason C.

Life: A User's Manual is the magnum opus of one of the most startlingly inventive and original novelists who ever lived. The French polymath Georges Perec, an associate of the Oulipo collective, once wrote a full-length novel without ever using the letter "e", then he wrote one in which "e" is the only vowel employed at all. In Life: A User's Manual, he deconstructs the lives in a fictional apartment block in Paris at one single... (read more)Recommended by Jason C.

Known primarily in the West for providing the source story to Kurosawa's wonderful film Rashomon, in Japan Akutagawa is regarded as the father of the modern short story and as a cult figure, revered for his short, tragic life and the sinister shades contained in many of his stories. This collection includes the disturbing and perfectly rendered "Hell Screen."Recommended by Jason C.